On an average day, a technician may meter hundreds of fluid samples using a pipette dispenser such as the pipette gun taught by Kenney in U.S. Pat. No. 4,624,147, incorporated herein by reference. The pipette gun is operated by depressing one of the two finger-operated triggers to draw fluid into the pipette or expel fluid from the pipette.
Over time, repetitive depression of the pipette gun triggers can cause fatigue and/or repetitive movement injury in the technician's fingers and/or hand. Once a technician develops a repetitive stress or repetitive movement injury in his fingers or hands, the technician may not be able to operate a pipette gun without experiencing pain and/or discomfort. In very serious cases, the technician may be completely unable to operate the pipette gun and thus, not be able to perform his job. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a pipette dispenser that can be operated in a manner other than by depressing finger triggers on the handle of the dispenser.
While using a pipette dispenser during the performance of various tasks, a technician repetitively raises and lowers the pipette dispenser with his arm. Depending on the length of the pipette, the height of the technician, and the task to be performed over time, the range of motion required by the technician's arm may be great enough to cause discomfort or injury. Therefore, in order to minimize repetitive motion or repetitive stress injury in the technician's arm, it would be desirable to provide a pipette dispenser having a handle that is adjustable in length so that the range of motion of the technician's arm during a particular task can be adjusted for the technician's comfort.